2007 was the year when Apple revolutionized the smartphone market. Mobile phones no longer required buttons and images could easily be magnified or reduced with two fingers. But where was Nokia the, market leader among mobile phone manufacturers, when the revolution begins? Though Nokia is still the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world the competitors are quickly catching up. In addition to Apple, even Google, Motorola and HTC have surpassed Nokia in the smartphone domain.
30,020 Nokia employees work in the field of research and development. This is about 30 percent of all employed Finns. But all these endeavours are not sufficient to dispute Apple in the smartphone market. Smartphones from the Finnish company suffer from the reputation of being cumbersome to operate. For example, the N97 that was launched on 2009 confused its users with a messy menu structure. Because of iPhone many users were used to have all items directly on the start screen. The new operating system MeeGo is supposed to solve this problem starting 2011. Nokia can see that the disadvantage is also due to patent infringements. Court proceedings have been on since 2009.
500,000,000 members have joined Facebook since July 2010 and the number is on the rise. MySpace had underestimated his development. In 2007, MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe had described Facebook as a ‘Network for students. That is the niche.’ Today MySpace focused mainly on musicians. In 2005, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation took over MySpace for USD580 million and the company wanted to develop MySpace into a multimedia rival on MTV. But the plan failed, since users did not go along with this. MySpace stagnated, while Facebook consistently increased its membership. Today, the network has about 100 million members. Three years back, the number of members was more than double of this. And only about 18 million members are active and the tendency is sinking.